The shell is moderate in size (maximum length 75 mm) and broadly fusiform. The spire is high, consisting of two and one-half nuclear whorls and seven weakly shouldered postnuclear whorls. The suture is deeply impressed. The body whorl is moderately large and fusoid. The aperture is moderately large and ovale, with an anal sulcus bounded parietally by a spiral ridge extending into the aperture. The outer apertural lip is erect and finely dentate. The columellar lip is adherent for a short distance above, but detached for more than half its length. The siphonal canal is shorter than the spire and narrowly open.
The body whorl bears the typical three foliaceous varices of Chicoreus. Additional axial sculpture consists of two or three intervarical costae; these are enlarged and nodose at the shoulder. Spiral sculpture consists of low major and minor cords, these most prominent over the intervarical tubercles. Tn addition, the entire surface is covered with finely tuberculate threads. Where the cords intersect the varices, moderately long, open, distally foliated spines are developed; the longest, at the shoulder, is recurved. Below this are four or five spines on the body and two or three on the canal, all of which are straight. Smaller, ventrally bent spinelets are intercalated with the spines on the body.
Shell color is white, with the crest of each cord brown. The intervarical costae and the ends of the spines may be lightly suffused with brown. A periostracum preserved on one specimen is cocoa-brown and minutely hairy.

Southeastern Japan to New Caledonia (including Taiwan and the Philippines).